If you’ll recall, 2 years ago I wrote a review of Bob “Moviebob” Chipman’s book Super Mario Brothers 3: Brick By Brick, in which he discusses how his life has for the most part revolved around the classic video game Super Mario Brothers 3. The book was…not very good, but I did say that said book was demonstrative in how to live one’s life.

So much so that I have deigned, starting now and continuing in intermittent intervals, to do a complete audiobook of this book. I am not mocking the book or parodying it, I am just reading it as it is, with tasteful musical accompaniment.

As stated in the video, this particular video is on the prologue and first part of the book, and each subsequent video in this audiobook series will be one chapter or section of the book, depending on how the book is organized.

Section 1: The History of Mario

The second problem, and in my opinion the biggest flaw, is that Bob speaks of this video game, a commercial product, with a quasi-religious air of gravitas that I (speaking as a Mario fan) feel the franchise (or any game franchise, really) absolutely does not deserve. This problem starts in the foreword (along with a dose of unwarranted self importance), and continues throughout.

Amusingly, the foreword ends with a sentence proclaiming that Bob wanted to choose a game that “formed an emotive journey with him”, and then clarifies “It should be a game I loved”-or rather, it should have said that. Instead it says “I should be a game I loved”. While this is undoubtedly a typo (one of many in the text, bad editing being another problem), it is oddly fitting for reasons you will see below.

This first section is the best of the book-in fact, there’s a fair amount I agree with, such as when he proclaims that a truly great character should be created organically, rather than by a focus group. But it’s really nothing a gamer wouldn’t be familiar with already: the failure to obtain the Popeye license, Donkey Kong, etc.

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